"You're telling me you perform all these calculations in the middle of combat every time you use the Pathfinder technique?" Senior K'Mala asked him with a horrified expression.
('More actually,') Rui smiled. "Just about, yes."
The Martial Union and the G'ak'arkan Tribe knew about his remarkably potent Martial Path, but nobody asides from him knew about the VOID algorithm. Nobody knew the sheer amount of calculations that fired through his mind and the Mind Palace every time he created an anti-style to counter his opponent.
Senior Ceeran just sighed with a wry smile. He had already gone through this shock a long time ago and had gotten used to this truth, but the same could not be said about Senior K'Mala who had been presented with the ODA System for the first time.
Up until this point, she had been entirely unfit to even learn about it. The G'ak'arkan Tribe's mathematics had not progressed beyond the four basic operations of mathematics. However, she had finally gotten up to speed where she could read the ODA system protocols and calculations and not feel like a fool.
Yet, when she realized that Rui had executed all these protocols continuously in his fights against the K'ulnen Tribe but also in that impressive demonstration of the technique that he had given, she couldn't help but lose her composure for a brief moment.
"How?" She narrowed her eyes. "You're just a rank two Martial Artist, your mind should be slower than that of ours! Yet you can perform this technique faster than we ever could!"
Rui couldn't help but smile awkwardly at that outburst.
His mind went back to what his brother Julian had told him regarding some of the empirical research that had been conducted regarding the neurological enhancements that Martial Artists received.
Martial Artists possessed superhuman mental faculties and cognition when it came to mental and/or physical activities surrounding Martial Art. The further away the activity they were performing was away from that of physical combat with their Martial Art, the less superhuman their mental faculties and cognition were.
That meant that even the most powerful Martial Artists would not be able to read sophisticated literature faster than a human scholar or make mathematical calculations faster than a human. But if it came to processing their opponent's attacks and the battle, Martial Apprentices and Martial Squires were dozens and thousands of times superior to baseline humans.
Rui had strongly suspected that this was due to the fact that only some parts of the brains of Martial Artists were augmented and enhanced. He suspected that out of all the regions of the brain, almost all of the augmentation went to the parts of the brain that were relevant in combat such as the cerebellum, the occipital lobe, and the parietal lobe. This would explain why Martial Artists were extraordinarily superhuman mentally in combat but otherwise normal when it came to ordinary mental activities. The parts of the brain being used for the two activities were different and mutually exclusive, and only the parts of the brain used for one activity were vastly superhuman while the other one was normal.
At this point in time, he hadn't figured out whether the VOID algorithm and the ODA system fell into the non-combat or combat group. The two were mental systems that involved a lot of mathematical and statistical calculations which were certainly not related to the combat parts of the brain. However, their purpose was for combat, and it ultimately was performed in the midst of combat, thus it could not be said to be non-combat related. It was most likely leaning toward the latter.
As far as Rui could see, his intellect and extra-grown mind most likely made up for any gap it had.
However, the same could not be said for Senior Ceeran and Senior K'Mala. The calculations of the ODA system were daunting to them because they did not have his remarkable intellect.
He knew that in a direct comparison between him and them, he would most likely fall back a bit because their minds were still vastly faster, but that was purely because of their rank. They would not be able to use it as smoothly as he did, against other Martial Seniors.
And that was fine. Their goal was to merely use the ODA system as a contributing element in the long-range techniques that they themselves would be developing.
"I have an affinity for these techniques because I built them for me and my strengths and weaknesses. It's part of the reason that the technique has so much individuality," Rui explained patiently. "It is obvious that the two of you won't use it as well as I do. Now, get to memorizing this. You need to embed the ODa system into your bones otherwise you have no chance of mastering it."
And so the grind began as Rui had begun the third course of his education program, pushing them through rigorous and tough education and testing.
Senior K'Mala gritted her teeth as she did her absolute best to keep up. Every time she even remotely felt like giving up, Rui reminded her of her haughty statement regarding being able to handle everything he threw at her. Her pride and ego would not allow her to let Rui force her to swallow her words back.
It was frustrating because Rui even seemed to enjoy it to a certain extent. It put a fire under her ass and drove her to learn everything he gave her as fast as she could. She was determined to master it and prove herself right.
Though, she half suspected that that was exactly what Rui was after every time he teased her. He did not seem like a needlessly cruel or vindictive person, and with how shrewd he was, he may very well have figured out that this was the best way to motivate someone like her. With how sharp he had proven himself to be, she knew that this was probably the case. She had always been one of the few intellectual and rational people of her tribe, yet she felt slow in front of Rui.