They were arrogant words at face value, yet one could tell Rui was not merely grandstanding.
He meant every word.
That was why many could not help but believe him.
Perhaps it really was too late. Perhaps they should have taken him down sooner, and no longer had any chance of doing so.
Almost as if to prove a point, Rui moved, rushing forward toward them.
His eyes were fixed on the Martial Squire closest to him. He lashed forward, launching his most powerful attack!
A powerful Flowing Canon flew in the direction of his closest competitor. Ordinarily, an attack from so far away would be easier to dodge.
Yet Rui knew he wouldn't dodge.
The man he was targeting was a powerful defensive Martial Artist with a body that was slanted toward passive defense.
"Come!" The man firmly planted his feet into the ground, while adopting a defensive stance.
He was confident that at the very least, he would be able to handle Rui's raw power, if nothing else.
It wasn't that his confidence was misplaced. His analysis was actually quite reasonable. When one considered Rui's weight compared to his, as well as the fact that his Martial Body did not seem slanted for offense, and neither did his Martial Art, then the conclusion was quite reasonable.
Yet unfortunately for him, Rui did not fit into standard models of Martial Artists.
He was a deviant. And the man would find that out the hard way.
TAP TAP TAP!
Where he expected a powerful strike that he had braced his abdomen for were mild finger pokes.
Yet it was only when he couldn't move anymore for a brief moment that he felt a deep flash of dread.
SPLAT!
Rui struck at his eyes with his fingers at the very moment that he was unable to move. He had baited the man into adopting a passive defensive stance meant to withstand a powerful blow, and switched up at the last moment, opting to instead for a choice that could not be defended against with conventional passive defense and paralyzing him for a moment as a result.
After that, it was simply a matter of choosing which vital to attack. He went for the eyes because they were the easiest.
Four Martial Artists. Four seconds. This content © Nôv/elDr(a)m/a.Org.
The others gritted their teeth with grim expressions when they witnessed how quickly Rui took down their one and only defensive powerhouse.
That was more than just a little discouraging. They hoped that a defensive Martial Artist would be able to hold out for longer. Ideally, if he had been able to stall him by weathering all of his attacks, then this would have been easier for them. They would be able to gang up on him with the defensive Martial Squire throwing himself in front of Rui to use himself as a shield to take all of his attacks.
Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case. Rui had long predicted that the man would be able to withstand his attacks in base form, aside from perhaps Transverse Resonance tier five. Rather than wasting energy on taking him down the hard way, he simply made full use of patterns that the elementary predictive models had been created from.
Someone who was prone to tanking offense passively probably still relied on some amount of active defense to cover vital spots. Rui simply got rid of that active defense for a moment through Lightning Tap.
While the others couldn't help but be shocked at how quickly a defensive Martial Squire fell, Rui was rather nonchalant.
This wasn't the first time, and it most certainly wouldn't be the last.
He rushed forward.
"Cocky bastard!" Three Martial Squires rushed forward, launching three attacks.
WHOOSH
Not a single attack touched so much as a hair on his body. One moment he was in front of them, within the range of their attacks.
The next moment, he disappeared. They couldn't even sense him.
No… That wasn't quite right.
('Shit! He's behind us!')
Yet by the time they turned around, the last thing they saw was Rui's mouth opening as he exhaled.
BOOM!!!
A titanically powerful sound attack crashed into all three of them, launching them away. This was the most apt way to use the attack, to use it to take down as many Martial Squires at a time as possible.
Getting past them was simple for Rui. He had simply employed Phantom Step at exactly the right moment to slip into their blind spots. Phantom Step worked the best when it was used to show one what they wanted to see when they wanted to see. Yet using that to crouch into their blind spot into the last moment required deep foresight of their positions.
It was something that could only be accomplished with a deep amount of insight into their fighting styles.
It was not something that just about anybody could do.
Seven Martial Squires. Seven seconds.
Although a greater amount of time had passed from Rui's perspective, only seven seconds had passed since he began fighting back.
And in that time, seven Martial Squires had already fallen.
Rui turned around with a bland expression, eying those who remained.
Yet those that remained wanted nothing more to do with him.
"Shit, he's coming!"
"Get away!"
"I forfeit!"
The spectators, who had been silent and shocked since the turnaround had occurred, began laughing at them and cheering for Rui. Unlike the Martial Squires, the spectators did not know who he was. The names of each Martial Squire were not tediously announced before the contest began, thus their identities were known.
Rui was just another Martial Squire who appeared to be targeted for some reason. He did not make much of an impression prior, compared to the grade-ten Martial Squires that had been valiantly fighting back since the start of the contest.
That changed in the past seven seconds, as Rui almost became a different person in their eyes, taking down Martial Squires as though they were ordinary civilians was a shocking yet entertaining sight to see.