The Martial Unity

Fae rushed over to Milliana, with a potion already prepared.

"You okay?" She asked, with a rarely visible hint of concern for her friend.

"...Yes." She squeezed out amidst her panting. "Just exhausted."

Fae turned to Nel who was still jogging, she could see palpable boredom in his demeanor. He hadn't broken the slightest bit of a sweat. It's clear this was nowhere near his limit.

('Just how many hours has it been?') Fae wondered. She wasn't surprised that Nel bested her in stamina, it was not her forte, but she didn't think the difference would be so drastic. Neither the second nor the third round hadn't been enough to push either of them to the limits of their stamina, so it hadn't struck her tenacious he was.

Rui and Kane were quite shocked at both their performances, but especially Nel's.

"Is such a thing even possible? Has he consumed an enhancing potion?" Rui pondered. He turned to Kane;

"Do you know him? Is he part of a Martial Family?" He asked, looking for a possible explanation.

Kane shook his head. "Never seen him before the Entrance Exam. He doesn't seem to be a Martial Apprentice with a stamina-oriented Martial Art either."

Rui nodded. Although he wasn't familiar with Apprentice-level techniques yet, it didn't seem like Nel was using some advanced technique that minimized consumption of energy like Milliana seemed to be, his running form was lazy and sloppy. This really seemed to be a matter of raw stamina.

"He's probably either consumed an enhancement potion like you suggest or..." Kane murmured.

"Or he was born with a body that surpasses human limits."

Rui's eyes widened. "Is that even possible."

Kane nodded. "I've heard of it, that's all."

Rui turned back to Nel, who had now been coaxed by Senior Tarrokov to get off the treadmill. It seems Nel's tenacity had surpassed the Martial Senior's patience. Not that it was a big deal, with the absurd stamina he showed.

Rui observed the Senior's reaction to Nel's performance. He seemed more exasperated than surprised or shocked.

('Guess even this ridiculous performance isn't a big deal to Martial Seniors.')

There was a small break once the stamina evaluation test ended. Rui and Kane chit-chatted and bantered while the contestants who passed after them recuperated with stamina potions. Once all the freshmen gathered having fully recovered. Senior Tarrokov spoke to them about the upcoming tests.

"The next part of the physical evaluation will be centered around muscular power. You'll have your weight measured before you perform a series of muscle-intensive activities with the training equipment in this facility." He explained. "Your performance will be weighted in regards to your weight, age and sex for the actual evaluation."

Rui nodded. It made sense to evaluate physical strength in regards to weight, age and sex, rather than measure muscular power in a vacuum. The former was a more reliable onlook into whether their muscular power was optimal or not. The latter was just worthless. In fact, on Earth the norm for empirical data included far more variables and parameters than just those three.

Hormonal levels, muscle mass to body mass ratio, bone density and other metabolic variables were accounted for when gathering data. Weight, age and sex were just the bare minimum.

The following tests went quickly and smoothly. The students were put through rigorous weight lifting exercises, with and without weights giving the evaluators a diverse dataset. The following tests of the Physical evaluation tested a variety of physical parameters and attributes like speed, agility, reaction time and reflexes, as well as flexibility and durability.

Within an hour, the physical evaluation ended.

"The next stage as mentioned prior, is the performative evaluation." Senior Tarrokov explained. "This stage has multiple tests entered around body-eye coordination, a relatively large attribute with many sub-attributes as well as other parameters like balance, spatial awareness, analysis and judgement etc."

Rui performed worser off in this stage than he did in the prior, relatively speaking. It couldn't be helped. He started out with a huge handicap of mismatched muscle-memory, which took many years to correct. If not for that he would probably have performed as good as Kane did.

('Maybe even better.') He sighed inwardly. All in all, his performance in the performative evaluation was unremarkable, his designated evaluator concluded.

That was, until they reached the analysis and judgement test.

...

"He's not even an Apprentice..." Senior Tarrokov murmured to himself with a surprised expression. He looked at Rui with a scrutinizing gaze.

"Uhm... This is the correct way to do it right?" Rui asked awkwardly.

The test multi-staged test that began with an IQ test, before moving onto more applied deduction evaluations. The freshmen were put in tests with certain conditions to be fulfilled in order to pass. However, the conditions were such that they could not be accomplished by physical or Martial Prowess. Be it capturing species of bats that were too agile be captured unless the limitations and weaknesses of echo-location were appropriately exploited, using the behavioural tendencies of creatures to manipulate them in specified ways to fulfill the conditions, or deducing the location of required items from the surroundings.

All of these tests evaluated different aspects of analysis and judgement. This was a broad performative attribute could not be evaluated with a single test, after all.

However, Rui aced them all. He even passed the final stage, the only one that did. The final stage was an almost impossible test meant to ascertain the limits of even extremely intelligent students who passed all prior tests. The freshmen were each tossed into a stuffy room with booby traps that would launch projectiles on you, furthermore, the triggers for the trap was everything, every step you took triggered the projectiles. That alone was hellishly difficult, but the actual condition for victory was to kill bouncing slimes.

It was practically impossible.

"How did you...?" Kane asked, after he witnessed Rui's performance.

Rui glanced at him and shrugged. "I ignored the slime and tanked its damage initially, it was too difficult to try and brute-force, I instead paid attention to the booby traps. The projectiles of the trap weren't impossibly fast, I could probably take a step out of the way narrowly before they hit me. Yet I was unable to dodge them initially, they hit me even after I moved, almost as if they knew the direction I was moving in. The question was, how?" Rui asked them. Before explaining

"The possibility of a separate sensory and targeting system could be excluded, the traps were unable to account for three-dimensional motion, the success of ducking and jumping was oddly high, albeit not enough. This strongly denied the presence of a separate targeting system, it was much more likely that the targeting system was connected to the triggers." Rui deduced.

"Occam's Razor dictates that the simplest possibility was the likeliest, it was quite likely that the system extrapolated the direction of evasion through the direction made by connecting my steps on the ground with a line. Once I verified this, it was easier to avoid the traps, I could simply walk in a direction perpendicular to the direction drawn out by my steps. Once I grew comfortable with it, it was time to kill the slime. Using a combination of my own attack as well as manipulating the traps by stepping in a certain way together, I was able to hit the slime with the instated booby traps, took me a while though." Rui shrugged, ending his explanation.

Kane and others who were listening to his explanation stared at him with open jaws.

Kane turned to another student who was close to them with a confused expression.

"Did you understand?"

The poor boy shook his head.