The Martial Unity

Rui was still pondering about Fae’s words earlier. They made more and more sense in hindsight.

(‘I do recall Master Aronian saying the criteria was left to their discretion. But I didn’t think the criteria would be so independent of the outcome of the objective.’)

Rui didn’t think the decision to accept it could have been too easy, the outcome likely still mattered to some extent. Maybe there was some degree of a controversy within the Union.

He shrugged, he couldn’t possibly know and probably never would. And frankly, he had no interest either. He glanced at Fae before asking her something that had been bugging him for a while.

“How did you knock me out?” He really wanted to know what she’d done.

“I struck you with my palm.” She smiled at him.

“How did you strike me hard enough to knock me out in that position and range?” He squinted his eyes in confusion.

“I can’t go around revealing my trump cards so easily, now can I?” Fae threw a mischievous smile at him

“It’s a technique called Outer Convergence, it’s a technique that allows you to gather power from all over your body into a single strike. It allows you to strike with a great amount of power, above your weight class, from practically any position if fully mastered.” Kane explained.

Rui’s eyes flew wide open, while Fae’s eyes narrowed, throwing a subtle, yet sharp glare at Kane, who basked in her hostility with a smug grin. It sparked another bout of bickering provoked by Fae. But Rui couldn’t be bothered by their tantrums.

(‘Gathering power from all across the body into a single strike. That’s normally impossible except in a perfectly-suited position allowing you to leverage torque from all muscle groups. It’s interesting she could accumulate and summate torque from muscle groups all across the body in that position. It seems like a much more advanced version of the One-Inch Punch back on Earth.’)

The One-Inch Punch was an iconic strike that worked similarly to how Kane described  Outer Convergence. Obviously, Rui knew absolutely everything fathomable there was to fathom about the One-Inch Punch. The reason he failed to realize that Fae had hit him with a One-Inch Punch was because it made no sense to him, a person from Earth. It was true that the One-Inch Punch was a good demomstration of the channeling and convergence of power, it was also flashy and cool.

Except the One-Inch Punch was useless in actual fights; it was completely unpractical and worthless to launch strikes from one inch away, which is why no MMA/UFC fighter did that. Whereas Outer Convergence allowed Fae to perform feats that would be physically impossible on Earth.

(‘Martial Art, techniques and skills in this universe and world are not limited the way they were on Earth.’)

Well, duh. Rui had known this ever since he saw a Martial Artist destroy a massive tree trunk with a single punch. But back then, it was all veiled in mystery, seeing exactly how they defied the laws of physics was shocking to him.

(‘It’s almost as if the world is warping in and of itself, conspiring to allow techniques and skills such as this to surpass their limits. The laws of physics seemed to be just so ever slightly different such that his scientific background was relevant, while still different enough to allow such phenomena to occur.’)

That was, of course, still speculation. He didn’t dive deeper into the profound ontological gripes to be had between the differences of this world and his own. Frankly, he didn’t care to, it wasn’t his main interest. He put the issue at rest, for now.

“How do you know about the technique Kane? Have you also learnt it?” Rui asked.

“I haven’t, it’s not particularly relevant to the direction in which I’m developing my Martial Art. I know of it because it’s a somewhat common technique in offensive striking oriented Martial Arts, I’ve come across it before several times, it’s hard to deal with.”

It made sense, Outer Convergence certainly seemed to be a technique that was aimed at maximizing offense at the cost of maneuvering, this would run contrary to what Rui knew about Kane’s Martial Art.

“So the fact that you use Outer Convergence means your Martial Art is probably centered around offense, right?” He asked Fae.

“My Martial Art is indeed a short-range striking-oriented offensive Martial Art.”

“Short-range because of the palm-centric offensive style, right?”

Fae nodded in return, smiling.

Within the domain of close-quarters combat, kicking length was treated long-range, punching length was treated as mid-range, and elbowing/kneeing range was treated as short range. Fae’s striking style fell just short of mid-range CQC(close-quarters combat), thus being short range.

“Speaking of personal Martial Art, I wonder what yours will end up looking like.” Fae told him with a hint of curiosity on her face.

“I’d observed you for quite a while during the third-round, you never particularly demonstrated an affinity for any one particular domain, range, or technique” She continued. “From what I can see, you’ve been dedicating at least a large portion of your life to preparing for your Martial Path. It’s rather odd you haven’t developed affinities. Usually, signs of one’s Martial Art can be seen to atleast some degree even prior to the Martial Apprentice stage.”

Rui shrugged. “I’m not particularly drawn into any one particular style of fighting. I might become an all-rounder.”

“…Interesting, all-rounder styles are obviously more flexible than specialized styles, so that is a good choice.” Kane pointed out.

“Indeed, but there are also downsides to all-rounder styles. All-rounder styles have a greater variety of types of approaches in a fight, however, this means that the analysis and judgement needed to accurately choose the most efficient and effective choice, is much more difficult. The greater the variety of choices, the harder it is to choose correctly. Furthermore, the longer it takes to choose. This is the downside to all-rounder styles.” Rui continued.

On Earth, of course, the benefits that all-rounder styles, like the generic MMA fighting style, brought to the table surpassed the benefits bought by specialized styles. The empirical data was clear, fighters who hyper-specialized lost in a UFC/MMA setting, which was the closest thing to real combat.

Pure strikers were unable to deal with grapplers once the grapplers closed in point-blank, pure grapplers were unable to cope with ranged nature of striking that prevented pure grapplers from reaching point-blank, not without getting severely hurt or knocked out.

However, this was not Earth. This was Gaea. The Martial Art in this world was vastly different from that of the martial arts on Earth. This meant that things that shackled the fighters of Earth did not exist in this world!