"What?!" Rui frowned with incredulity, widening his eyes.
"Yeah, I couldn't believe it myself when I first heard him, but he made it quite clear," Kane sighed, tired. "But he approached me when I was eating lunch in the cafeteria. And then he challenged me out of nowhere from the blue."
"And then?"
"Well, I had to accept since I hadn't accepted any challenge in the past ten days at all," Kane replied. "I'm so glad that killing has been prohibited ever since the war began, I would be a lot more nervous if it wasn't."
Kane had seen Ieyasu fight and had absolutely no intentions of ever getting into a fight with the man if he could just ignore and reject his challenge.
But unfortunately, he simply couldn't.
"But why?" Rui frowned for a moment before he arrived at an answer almost immediately.
"I don't know, honestly," Kane replied, sighing. "Why would the number one guardian challenge me, who's not even in the first class? Why even challenge anyone at all? It makes no sense."
('His Martial Art is imitative evolution...') Realization dawned on Rui almost immediately. ('Could it be that he wants some of the techniques that Kane has?')
If that were the case, it would make a lot of sense. After all, some of Kane's techniques were highly unconventional, and also extremely powerful.
Kane had displayed both Void Step and Fulminata when he first challenged a guardian for their spot.
Could it be that word had finally traveled to Ieyasu, who wasn't present there, and was extremely isolated in the matters of the lower?
Perhaps he had become interested in what he had heard about Kane and wanted a piece of it.
This was pure speculation at the moment, but he could not think of another reason for why the man would be challenging Kane. Kane was not a threat, he had nothing to gain from beating Kane in a duel.
He had nothing to gain from beating anybody in a duel, he was the highest-ranked guardian at the moment.
So the fact that he still challenged Kane meant that he was gaining something from fighting Kane, something or the other. Rui considered various intangible potential benefits that he gained from fighting Kane, but almost none of them were realistically viable.
However, if the man's goal was to copy Void Step and Fulminata.
That was quite ambitious on his part if that really was the case.
If that was the case, then it meant that he had the confidence to break down powerful grade-ten techniques as easily as he did other techniques.
However, Rui was actually skeptical of him being able to copy Fulminata.
That technique not only required an esoteric substance that could generate charge and current and integrate it into one's body, but it also required having an affinity for a technique like that, for lightning.
Which meant that the only thing that he would be able to copy and improve was Void Step. However, in order to be able to copy the technique, he needed to be able to sense it in the first place.
That was not something just anybody could do. The only reason that Rui could thoroughly sense Kane despite the technique was because his senses were extremely powerful, having a mind powerful enough to resist the misdirection, and having a technique that bypassed the mechanism of misdirection.
That was why Void Step was simply never effective against him. He could deal with it even though other Martial Squires seemingly never could.
The question remained to be seen whether he would even be able to sense past it, and whether merely sensing Kane would be enough to replicate the technique that he was using at the time.
Unfortunately, Rui did not know much about the mechanics by which he copied techniques, and improved upon them. Until he learned about that, he did not know whether he would be able to copy techniques like the Void Step technique.
Regardless, he was quite curious about how the fight would go.
It was unfortunate, but it was quite unlikely that Kane would be able to beat him if he managed to get a chance to fight him during such a fight.
It wasn't that Kane was weak, certainly not.
It was that Ieyasu was just monstrously powerful, capable of putting people of Kane's caliber down.
However, nonetheless, he was quite interested in seeing how it went down. It was always interesting to see two powerful Martial Artists got at it.
Regardless, Rui had underestimated how popular Ieyasu was.
The entirety of all guardians had gathered to witness the man fight against Kane.
That was something that blew Rui's mind. The fact that everybody was willing to drop whatever they had just for this was honestly shocking.
That was the kind of attention that Martial Seniors might receive from Martial Squires, but it was absolutely unprecedented for Martial Squire to be able to gain such kind of attention unperturbed.
The two of them got into the arena
Kane put on an extremely serious expression. It appeared that despite his prior confusion and uncertainty, he was able to project his severity.
The two of them stood at a distance from each other.
"Challenger; Guardian Ieyasu."
Ieyasu stepped forward.
"Defender; Guardian Nake."
As did Kane.
"Take your stances,"
Kane adopted his usual light maneuvering stance.
Ieyasu adopted a similar stance, much as Rui had predicted. If he was going to copy someone's Martial Art, he needed to begin with their stances.
Stances were the opening position with which Martial Artists began a battle through, they were quite important and usually were the best possible position to seamlessly execute their Martial Art.
Although he was worried for Kane, he was quite hyped to see Ieyasu hopefully demonstrate the manner in which he coped with techniques that were different. This was something he had missed in Senior Xanarn's sparring session rounds where Ieyasu had beaten her relying on his own prowess.
