The Martial Unity

"The hallucinogens have been administered." Doctor Herin nodded. "Subject is under the influence of the drugs."

"Begin." Squire Luna turned to the Martial Apprentice who had accompanied her.

"Yes, Squire Luna." He nodded as he walked over to beside Rui, kneeling down. He brought his mouth close to Rui's ear as he began whispering inaudibly.

It was an auditory hypnotic technique that manipulated the target's mind to alter their perception to a certain degree. Normally, it was something that was very partial in nature, however, due to the fact that Rui was already in a drug-induced hallucination, the technique worked entirely, allowing the Martial Apprentice to manipulate Rui's perception of not just the world, but himself.

('Woah.') The pitch-black world turned white as Rui fell to hard ground.

As Rui tried to get up, he noticed something extremely strange.

('I'm heavy...') He glanced at his arms. His eyes widened as he realized he was extremely muscular. His muscles bulged exaggeratedly, as though they were trying to break out of his body.

('Huh...') He tried getting up, almost falling over due to a lack of familiarity with his body. Yet, he realized it didn't feel as alien as he had expected.

('Partly because this is inside my imagination, but also because it is still based on my memory of my body.') He mused.

It was the perfect way to test his compatibility with various kinds of bodies.

('As planned, the first Martial body configuration is a heavy-weight power and durability oriented Martial body that sacrifices speed.') He noted as he tried moving his arm around.

('I'm so ridiculously slow.') He groaned mentally, as he swung a few strikes, trying to gauge how the body actually performed.

His agility and speed were painful. He felt like a lumbering sloth compared to his actual body.

('Man, how the fuck do heavier Martial Artists deal with being this slow?') He groaned inwardly. ('This is criminal!')

Suddenly, a figure appeared before him.

It was a spitting image of his actual self.

This was something that Rui had been informed about ahead of time, so he wasn't too surprised. However, he undeniably felt a sense of deja-vu.

('Didn't I go through something similar during the Mindmirror implantation procedure?') He recalled fighting himself back then, during that procedure as well.

Suddenly, his figure rushed towards himself with remarkable speed and agility. Yet Rui had expected that as well. He had already been informed about the details in the briefing session. The point of the procedure was to test how compatible a given Martial body was with his Martial Art compared to his current body.

Of course, Rui did not actually have any expectations that he would perform well with a heavy power-oriented and durability-oriented body. Yet, this was part of the standard procedure so he couldn't help but bear it.

He was already sure that his Martial body would be some configuration that would fall into the all-rounder category, however, he was required to test out Martial bodies of various kinds regardless, just to be sure.

BAM!

Rui barely managed to move his slow heavy body as he conjured up a guard, blocking the straight punch that his clone had thrown at him.

His clone had attacked with one of its most powerful attacks; the Flowing Canon. The attack was further boosted with Outer Convergence and Flame Breathing as far as power went, furthermore, the blow had been empowered by the momentum built up with Parallel Walk, Balanced Direction, and Wind Breathing. Furthermore, the impact had been permeated with the help of Reverberating Lance.

It was a devastating attack that when landed was extremely difficult to defend against.

Ordinarily, had Rui faced such an attack himself, he would have chosen to evade it rather than withstand it head-on. However, in his heavy and slow body, it was impossible for him to evade anything. He gritted his teeth as he used Inner Divergence, Acute Edge, and Elastic Shift to mitigate the damage of the attack. The Adamant Reforging seemed to have been retained even in the new Martial body that he currently had.

He skidded back a bit, surprised. The damage had been far less than he had expected. The raw durability was far greater than that of his actual body, allowing him to withstand an immense amount of punishment.

His clone began aggressively pummeling him with attacks. Rui immediately had to adjust his strategy, he aimed for a tight defense that required minimal movement in order to counter fake Rui's attacks.

However, that crippled his offense and gave fake Rui an immense amount of leeway, the latter's combat style grew more and more offensive as there was less the latter had to fear. Rui was at a disadvantage since his maneuvering techniques were basically useless, he had to try and stick with his offensive and defensive techniques whereas fake Rui was using everything in his arsenal.

('Almost everything.') Rui suddenly noted as he made an astute observation. ('He's not using the VOID algorithm... Not the predictive or the adaptive-evolution model.')

This told him a lot about the nature of the hallucination and the hypnosis. The fake Rui was clearly using his techniques, which meant that the hallucination being generated did tap into his mind for information on his Martial Art to a certain extent. However, the fact that his clone was not using the VOID algorithm, meant that the hallucination could not replicate the mental processes he engaged in when he fought.

The VOID algorithm was one such thing. Its requirement to actively gather and process information likely made it impossible for it to be replicated in a hallucination. This was quite distinct from the Mindmirror implantation process where the clone he faced mentally was able to replicate the VOID algorithm in combat against him.

('I'm at a disadvantage in so far as the compatibility of my body with my Martial Art is, but the fact that I can use the VOID algorithm and my hallucinated clone can't is more than enough of an advantage.') Rui grinned.