The Martial Unity

Chapter 3278: Trained Manipulation

“I suppose the Nature Path breaks out of that mold because it explores a direction that I have never taken a single step in,” Rui murmured under his breath. “If that’s the case, mastering the six paths will not take forever.”

“Don’t get too ahead of yourself.” Mother Alicia got up from the wooden ground. “The fact of the matter is that you have just barely gotten the essentials of nature manipulation. There is far more to nature manipulation than just the basics and the foundations. You still have not learned to apply it in combat yet, and that in and of itself is the hardest part. You will have to develop the habits and methods to actually use it safely in combat, and that alone can be quite time-consuming.”

Rui got up as he dusted his Martial attire.

“I know.” He nodded as he stretched his body a bit. “However, I’m quite good at applying things to combat, as you will soon see.”

Mother Alicia smiled at him with an expectant expression.

“Let’s put that to the test then.”

WHOOSH

With a single wave of her hand, a myriad of branches and wood of her main body converged upon Rui with great power, threatening to blast him where he stood.

BOOM!

The powerful impacts crashed into his guard, launching him out of the Mother of Nature’s body and into the morning skies above the Forest of War. The attacks had come so fast that he didn’t even have the opportunity to use nature manipulation to react to them.

WHOOSH

Mother Alicia’s wood vessel leaped out of her main body as it pursued Rui while a wave of branches and trees followed her towards him.

“Don’t use your Martial Art directly,” she instructed him even as she unleashed a myriad of leaf and wood attacks. “Rely on nature to protect yourself. It may be slow and cumbersome now, but once you get used to it, you will be able to perform much better—”

Her emerald eyes lit up with amazement as the forests below him surged upward to his rescue, protecting her from his attacks and cushioning his fall. Since even sky-walking was a part of his Martial Art, he needed to rely on nature to gently cushion him as he fell.

BADUMP!

He activated his Martial Heart as he relied exclusively on his Tapestry of Nature system of thought and his Nature Interfacer technique to increase his manipulation of nature to an even greater degree.

RUMBLE

A section of the forests around him moved to his will as he used the relationship with nature that he had cultivated.

The wood of the trees shifted as they underwent rapid and spontaneous cellular division and relocation, a process that altered their shape at remarkably shocking speeds.

He closed his eyes as a single command escaped his mouth.

“Attack.”

Nature itself seemed to roar into action as he unleashed a dense and heavy onslaught of wood against Mother Alicia.

And yet, the dark elf merely smiled.

“Not bad.”

BOOM!

Rui’s eyes widened as his attack crashed into a wall of wood that spontaneously erupted from the ground, intercepting his attacks.

He hadn’t even able to sense her communication with nature, although it was likely that she had manipulated nature through her main body rather than the paltry vessel before him that contained merely a pinch of her vast consciousness spread across her body and the Greater Genoran Flora Network.

Rui’s eyes sharpened as he communicated his will to nature, manipulating it to his desire as several roots emerged from the ground, coursing to wrap around her feet.

WHOOSH

A surge of branches rushed to pull her off the ground as a flurry of leaves emerged from all the trees around them, converging on him with great speed and power.

BOOM!

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!

Rui’s expression flickered with a hint of displeasure as his defenses were too late and too weak to entirely protect him from the attack, causing the leaves to spread cuts and wounds across his entire body.

Nature manipulation had a lag that Martial Art didn’t, and his muscle memory was working against him at the moment; he was accustomed to moving at the right moment just before it was too late to minimize the weaknesses in his movements.

However, the lag in nature manipulation required that he act as soon as possible rather than trying to time it later. Nature was fast, but it was not as fast as moving his own body with his own reaction time.

“Do not think too much,” Mother Alicia warned him. “You cannot afford to put too much thought behind each action you take when manipulating nature. You will need to account for the fact that an imperfect, timely defense is much better than a perfect but late defense. Learn to simply defend yourself at all times, regardless of whether an attack is coming.”

He could use his systems of thought to compensate for this, of course, but that was not the point of the training. The point of the training was to get him accustomed to actually applying nature manipulation in practice. There were a number of things about nature manipulation that ran completely contradictory to the tenets of Martial Art, so he needed to develop at least a basic sense for it; otherwise, he wouldn’t even be able to apply the gains that he had made in combat.

In fact, the misuse and the misunderstanding of power could be disastrous in combat. For instance, if the first time he used it in combat was in a life and death situation where he summoned nature to protect him from an attack, but because he wasn’t accustomed to the lag, the defense comes too late and kills him.

It was precisely to avoid these kinds of situations that Mother Alicia had taken to personally seeing that she would hammer a sense for nature manipulation into his bones herself.

“Get ready. Here I come.” She warned him as she unleashed an onslaught of attacks from nature against him.