"This feeling…"
How could he not recognize it? He had sensed it countless times in his life.
"Martial Apprentice…" He murmured as he rapidly reached their location.
The two of them paused their sparring match as their senses picked up his approach. They turned to meet him with smiles on their faces.
Even before Rui could talk to them, he had already noticed how much they had grown. Their energy was calmer and more composed. They had lost their childish and immature demeanor. Their eyes, which used to be filled with wonder and curiosity, were not filled with determination.
Rui felt his heartache at the thought that he missed their breakthrough to the Apprentice Realm. It was a shame, but alas, it could not be helped.
STEP
He landed before them.
"The two of you…" He smiled. "To say that you have made me proud is an understatement. Congratulations, you are now Martial Artists."
He ruffled their head in adoration, though perhaps they were getting too old for it, admittedly.
"Thank you, big brother," Mana beamed at his praise.
"Thanks, big bro!" Max grinned.
"This must have been the surprise, eh?" Rui chuckled. "It's not nice to keep secrets from your big brother, you know?"
"Hehe… We wanted to tell you about the news in person," Max smirked.
The three of them shared a chuckle.
"Now then, tell me about your Martial Paths," Rui instructed.
Their expressions grew more serious.
"My Martial Art is centered around dynamic maneuvering," She explained. "My style of combat focuses on three-dimensional maneuvering for defensive and offensive applications. No attack must touch me, and no defense must restrict me."
"Interesting…" Rui nodded.
It made sense given how she had fought all this time. She always placed and timed her movements to position herself most appropriately. Thus he could see her Martial Path leaning in that direction.
He turned to Max, he had a feeling he knew what his Martial Path was as well.
"My Martial Art is cumulative momentum strikes!" Max grinned. "I rush, gather as much energy I can, and break my opponents with one big crash!"
"As expected…" Rui nodded. Max loved rushing in and throwing every ounce of energy that he had gathered into a single crash.
In a way, his Martial Path was pursuing the Flowing Canon technique that Rui used to have, to the extreme. Of course, this meant that his Martial Art was extremely narrow and extremely focused. This was not a bad thing.
He knew of Martial Artists who had reached fearsome heights purely focusing on a singular specialty.
The first one that came to mind was Hever.
Hever had, to this day, only mastered a single technique. He had incorporated elements of other techniques into it to elevate the technique. But it was still considered part of one technique.
Thus Rui did not dare look down on singular and focused Martial Art. It was because they gave everything to that one singular thing. Dedicated everything they had to offer in one direction, and they were able to accomplish feats that were simply incredible.
If Max kept pursuing a path to maximizing the lethality and dangerousness of his bullrush strikes, then he would no doubt become a fearsome Martial Artist.
"By the way, big brother?" Mana interjected his thoughts. "Our senses have grown so much better, and yet why can't I still sense even a shred of your power?"
Rui had still put on his human-level Mind Mask. He did not like drawing attention from others, after all. He had no interest in being the object of attention of normal human beings.
This was especially the case when considering the fact that he had been walking around with the aura of a grade-ten Martial Artist for ten months!
He had spent every day instantly attracting the admiration or fear of onlookers continuously for that long all because he needed to maintain the illusion of his strength. Now that he had returned back to the Kandrian Empire, he no longer needed to do that and could peacefully return back to not walking around as what was effectively a blindingly bright light to ordinary humans
"It's because I'm using a technique to suppress my power from being projected," Rui sighed replying. "It's not something I'm fond of."
"Enough talk brother. Let's spar!" Max was really excited to spar against Rui ever since he had broken through to the Apprentice Realm.
"Hehehe… You have been dying for this haven't you?" Rui smiled. "Who knows, even if you are Martial Apprentices, two against one might be too much."
He tried getting their hopes up a bit, hoping they did not understand the disparity between the Apprentice and Squire Realm.
"Don't fool us, big brother," Mana pouted. "We fought our hardest against our Apprentice Verema. But we were utterly helpless against him!"
"Ah… right," Rui had almost forgotten that he had hired a number of Martial Apprentices of different Martial Paths to expose his two siblings to different kinds of Martial Art. To show them what was possible. "Haha, I hoped I could pull a fast one over you."
The duo had been surprised at how helpless they had been against a Martial Apprentice, even if they were older.
"The Apprentice Realm is wide. It is divided into grades, ranging from one to ten," Rui explained. "The two of you at this moment are not even grade one, as you have not yet mastered a single Apprentice-level technique. Your Martial Apprentice mentors and trainers are all around grade-five."
"Is the gap between grade one and grade five that big?" She frowned. "It's two on one you know!"
They were still limited by their human experience. Generally, two-on-one between trained human-level fighters was a decisive victory for the two. Especially, if the fight was a fair duel. Humans did not have the ability to reach such high levels of skill that they could overcome a numbers advantage that also had skill themselves.
The same was absolutely not true for Martial Artists, and they were soon coming to learn that.
