The first round had come to an end. The matchups of the next round were automatically decided.

The first match of the second round was Ian Nepomniachtchi versus Freund Gamor.

The second match was Servil Bisha versus Rui Quarrier.

The third match was Ferlicia Ernand vs Mia Marnt.

And the final match of the round was Kaerts Omegde vs Fiona Roschem.

The winners of the round would go onto the semi-finals of the tournament.

"Aaaand with that we have come to an end to the first round ladies and gentlemen!" The host announced. "It was a spectacular round with amazing fights featuring the best of the youngest generation of Martial Artists! The next round will be commenced tomorrow at the same time, be sure not to miss it!"

Soon all the representatives dispersed from the viewing balcony back to their luxurious living quarters. Squire Kyrie and Dylon followed Rui back to his, they intended to have a thorough discussion of what had happened, and what was to happen.

"That was one hell of a first round." Rui sighed as he crashed into his bed. "My worldview of Martial Art widened more in the span of those several hours than it has in many months now."

Squire Kyrie smiled at those words. "And yet there is much more, as you'll slowly come to learn."

Rui smiled wordlessly at those words. "Now then, back to important matters. My next opponent is representative Servil Bisha."

"Hmm..." Squire Dylon hummed. "She's strong alright. You'll have to watch out for hee offense, her mastery over vibration-based permeation of impact is truly remarkable. It increases the lethality of her attacks to a very high level. If you take too many of those, you'll be coughing out your organs in no time."

Dylon told him. Rui took his words quite seriously, as the head Squire instructor of the offense department, his words on offensive techniques could effectively be treated as fact.

"Still." Dylon continued. "It's not that there aren't caveats to her fighting style."

Rui nodded in agreement. "The fact that the actual kinetic energy of her strikes isn't the reason they're lethal means they're easier to redirect."

Powerful attacks contained too much momentum and energy to be redirected easily. It would require a significant amount of power or extraordinary skill to redirect attacks like that.

But for Servil, this wasn't true. Her attacks did not contain an incredible amount of energy, the reason they were lethal despite that had to do with the fact that she permeated that energy deeper into the body.

Thus, her offense was not resistant towards redirective defensive measures.

"Indeed, you figured that out already huh?" Squire Dylon smiled helplessly. "Kind of makes our presence here a little pointless, no? Kyrie, you want to spend the night in my room?"

Squire Kyrie glared at him, though his words held a kernel of truth. The reason representatives were accompanied with two Squire instructors was because they would better allow the representative to fight at their best.

Yet Rui frankly did not need such aid. His knowledge, intellect in combination with his experience with the VOID algorithm made it so that he was more than capable of fighting optimally.

This condition frankly hurt him more than it helped him because his advantage against the other representatives were diminished due to this policy.

Rui had already thought about Servil a lot. Soon his thoughts strayed to the other representatives. He tried predicting and modelling their fights based on the data he had gathered from the fights of the first round.

('Ian is likely to win against Freund.') Rui surmised quickly.

Freund was a fearsome Martial Artist without a doubt. Frankly, Rui did not want to be on the receiving end of his poison at all if he could avoid it.

Yet Ian was just too much. His breathing techniques were incredibly powerful, allowing him have extremely high values in different parameters depending on what he wanted. Although he couldn't have it all simultaneously, the fact that he could switch back and forth made it quite difficult to deal with him. It made inherently tricky and confounding.

The third round's outcome was the most interesting to him.

Ferlicia Ernand vs Mia Marnt.: text © owner.

He wasn't sure which one of them would win. Ferlicia was a powerful heat-oriented fighter while Mia was centered versus sound. Part of his difficulty in modelling this fight came from the fact that his experience and understanding of heat and sound-based techniques were quite limited compared to more conventional techniques.

And when he had to try and extrapolate a fight between Martial Art centered around techniques he had never seen anything even remotely like prior, he was definitely confident of being super accurate as a result.

Still, he could make more basic inferences.

Being a close-range fighter primarily, Ferlicia would likely to everything in her power to close the distance, while Mia would do her best that never happened. After all, Mia was at her strongest at a distance.

Rui simply lacked the data to deduce a probability of victory for either side beyond that point. All he could say is if they succeeded with getting in their desired ranges and keeping it that way then they had a pretty solid chance of victory.

He imagined that their Martial Squire instructors were with them at this very moment telling them basically the exact same thing.

As for the final match, that was the fight he was most certain of. As impressive of Kaerts was, his odds of winning against Fiona were simply too low. He suspected Kaerts would liekly be able to hold on for long since his evasiveness was quite impressive, but asides from that, there likely wasn't much he could do. Fiona truly lived up to everything he heard. If her other attributes were even comparably powerful to the speed and power she had demonstrated, then kaerts could take pride even if he lasted several minutes.

He put the issue aside as he took some rest.