Thankfully, he got to skip one of the hardest parts of integrating poisons into one's body, which was general resistance. Because he needed the poison to work, he couldn't gain general immunity or resistance against it.
Thus, his training time was greatly shortened due to the removal of this step.
Despite that, it took quite some time. Mastering poison techniques took longer than he expected because of the time it took to master a new poison technique because not only did the technique surrounding them need to be mastered, but the poison itself took time to be integrated into the body.
With normal Martial Art techniques, only the technique itself required mastering. It canceled out with the reduction in training time that Rui got by skipping a step.
In the end, it was only four months later that he finally mastered the poison as well as the technique that allowed him to deploy the poison into his own body when he needed to.
One of the biggest hurdles was conditioning his body cells to release the poison when he sent enough of an electric shock through his own nerves.
By setting the trigger for the deployment of the poison as the Lightning Tap technique, he could make sure that he didn't inadvertently release the poison when he didn't need it. That would be quite catastrophic, if he ever was facing a Martial Artist against whom the defense was extremely important, activating the Reaper's Dew poison into his body would weaken his constitution, and therefore his defense.
That was why he spent extra effort to ensure that such a thing could not happen.
After a lot of time and hard work, his efforts finally paid off.
After four months, it was finally time to test his technique.
He exhaled deeply, trying to calm his anticipation.
TAP!
His thumb flew to the side of his neck, sending a pulse of current into the auricular nerve on his neck. For a moment, he partially felt the brief effects of Lighting Tap, numbness, and mild paralysis.
In the next moment, he felt a surge of pain across his entire body as the trigger was activated and Reaper's Dew was released across his epithelial tissue.
('And now...')
SPLAT!
He relaxed the muscles of his left arm...
SPLAT!
...Before inflicting a deep gash into it with a swing of his right arm.
What ensued happened so quickly that he almost didn't even react in time.
The wound began healing before it was even completely inflicted!
The starting points of the gash were already finished in their healing by the time the wound was completely inflicted.
"What?!" Rui blurted out in surprise.
He hadn't expected it to be so effective. It hadn't even been this effective when he fought guardian Herea.
('Then again, Squire Herea did not actually inflict any physical wounds for me to see the visible speed of tissue regeneration.') Rui realized.
Because the Reaper's Dew poison was something that she used routinely and was her only way of inflicting damage, he hadn't actually gotten wounded at all.
Still, even he felt that his technique was a bit too successful!
Wounding him was like trying to wound the surface of water, even if one struck at water very hard, the displaced area would be restored with water before the motion was even over.
('It's incredible,') He realized. ('This is only possible because of the combination of autophagy and the Reaper's Dew poison. These two together can essentially replicate the mechanics of a healing potion!')
This meant that with the addition of the Reaper's Dew poison in his body, he effectively had a healing potion in his body permanently.
The implications of this were massive. For one, he probably didn't strictly need to carry healing potions ever again. It also meant that if he ever came across a Martial Artist whose Martial Art was focused on hyperlethality at the cost of everything, he would simply be able to adapt to him with extreme perfection simply by activating Weaving Blood.
He didn't think that there was any offense in the Squire Realm that could possibly overwhelm his healing and regeneration.
If he stacked the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm onto that body, then it would be game over.
It took half a year, but he had finally finished the first step of Project Metabody.
('Currently, at the moment, I have a Martial body centered around super-healing, as well as one centered around super-speed.') Rui noted.
Both Weaving Blood and Void Forestep were his strongest techniques. And in hindsight, he realized that it was for a reason.
He hadn't created Void Forestep with the intention of it being a piece of a much larger and more ambitious project, but he now understood why it was so effective.
The technique itself was powerful, no doubt, but what made it so powerful was the fact that the technique had immense synergy with Rui's Martial Path and Flowing Void Style. It fundamentally catered to the idea of changing to adapt and evolve.
He just hadn't realized it.
The technique changed his spec configuration to adapt to the Root, and in turn, allowed him to beat it.
Weaving Blood was also similar, in concept as well as potency, of the same caliber of technique as Void Forestep.
Now, he needed to find similar techniques for offense and for defense. Once he got those two Martial bodies out of the way, he would have completed the first iteration of Project Metabody.
He didn't necessarily think that this would be the end of Project Metabody forever, everything had areas for improvement after all. He didn't just declare Project Water complete when the first iteration of the VOID algorithm rolled out. Many iterations of the VOID Algorithm came out even after the first iteration that were improved and far superior to their predecessors.
Perhaps Project Metabody would also be the same.
Regardless, he did look forward to the day that he succeeded with the first iteration, even if it wasn't necessarily the last.
