The Martial Unity

Fae resumed her offense, launching yet another heavy blow.

FWHOOSH

Tarah redirected her energy yet again, flipping her with. Thankfully, Fae's sense of balance and control over her power always allowed her to ensure she landed on her feet each time.

('My most powerful attacks take too long to land.') Fae realized. ('It seems her counter-offense needs great timing, which is easier to achieve with slower attacks.')

Fae intuitively figured out one of the answers Rui was hoping she would. She immediately stopped launching fearsome singular attacks and instead launched a swift barrage of shorter palm attacks. These attacks contained less power than her strongest full-body palm strikes, but they were much quicker and she could launch a greater number of them than her most powerful attacks.

Immediately, she noticed a difference.

Tarah resorted to redirecting them away, but she wasn't able to use Fae's energy against her like she had.

"She's switched to defensive redirection." Rui said, having anticipated it. "Redirection is delicate and requires a lot of precision, it won't be easy for her to be able to redirect all of Fae's power when there's so many different attacks all coming at her extremely swiftly."

"Doesn't seem like a capable technique." Kane commented. "She should stop relying on it."

"Redirection can be quite powerful when mastered." Rui disagreed. "But the problem is Fae's offense is just too strong. The greater the amount of power, speed and number, the harder it is to defend via redirection alone."

Rui was sure that Tarah would be able to redirect most of his attacks head-on. His offense was inferior to Fae's and she should have a much easier time than she was having against Fae.

Of course, Rui wouldn't fight her the way Fae did head-on. Analyzing and evaluating Tarah with the VOID algorithm yielded a pretty interesting solution. The anti-Tarah fighting style that the VOID algorithm developed relied on Rui abusing his Parallel Walk, Balanced Direction, Blink and Phantom Step together to launch tricky attacks, through holes in her defense that Rui had picked up via the VOID algorithm, that she would have trouble intercepting.

Counter-offensive required the user to intercept offense at the right timing, to perform whatever counter-offensive maneuver the user would perform, but the interception was the most important part of counter-offensive Martial Art techniques.

Drastically raising the difficulty to intercept was the greatest way Rui could hinder her.

He would launch a large number of weaker but quicker attacks like Fae did, but he wouldn't launch them head-on but instead would use his maneuvering and stealth to launch unpredictable and difficult tricky attacks.

He would eventually end the battle with a takedown via Mirage Dive or pierce her with the Stinger.

That was just him, of course. Furthermore, he had already resolved to hold back his more potent trump cards for important fights, and preferably win without them so that the surprise affect was maximized whenever he faced future opponents within the Academy.

Fae launched a curling palm strike.

FLICK

Tarah failed to redirect a strike fully for the time, the palm bypassed her interceptions and struck her cheek, bruising it.

POW POW POW

Fae pressed upon the opening launching a flurry of strikes.

Tarah grew more and more flustered as never-ending waves of powerful blows washed over her.

Although Fae considered these shorter swifter blows to be weak, that was by her standards.

By everyone else's standards, they were still incredibly strong.

BOOM

Just the slightest of slip-ups from Tarah and Fae exploited the opening to launch a heavy blow, the sheer impact blew the air out of Tarah's lungs, leaving her even more open.

BAM BAM BAM

Fae abused the gaping holes in Tara's defense, pounding her as much as she could.

BOOM

CRASH

A final close-range wound-up strike landed against Tarah's hastily construed guard, sending her crashing out of the ring.

Fae sighed.

"She won." Rui grinned.

"And she sent her opponent flying out again." Kane grumbled. "Can she just not win in a sane way?"

"It's part of her Martial Art." Rui shrugged laughing. "You can't hold that against her."

"Hold what against me?" Fae's voice suddenly appeared behind them.

"Holy fuck!" Kane jumped away. "Stop creeping on people woman!"

"My, that exaggerated reaction." Fae said with a hint of suspicion creeping into her tone. "What did you say to Rui?"

"Nothing at all." He shrugged nonchalantly.

He played it cool as she stared at him with sharp eyes. Rui shook his head with a wry smile.

"Congratulations." Dalen said. "Your offense is as absurd as always. I look forward to testing my defense against it."

"Nice win." Milliana nodded.

"Good tactic you employed there." Rui offered. "Your fighting approach has grown a lot more flexible since before."

"I realized I was too rigid a year ago." Fae replied. "Ever since then I've put a lot of weight into improving my flexibility and versatility."

Rui nodded. Fae was definitely in the top three threats, this was reaffirmed. Now that he had seen all three of the Martial Apprentices he considered to be the hardest to beat fight, he needed to start thinking about how he was going to deal with them.

Although he would have liked to have obtained more data, it was best to have some plans anyway. After all, he may not have that luxury.

It was very possible he would get paired up against one of them in the next few rounds, he didn't want to be unprepared for when that happened.

('I don't think I can hold back against any of them.') He sighed inwardly. His plan was to hide Blink and Stinger as his trump cards for as long as possible. But the strength these three had displayed was now causing him second thoughts. These two trump cards might be the only way he could possibly beat them, holding back was extremely risky. If he ran into them, he would use them whenever necessary.

Although he would be revealing all his cards, that was still better than losing.