Rui winced at her words.
Admittedly, he was pushing it.
"Er, well, I did get pretty handily smacked by Jormungandr the last ti I spoke to him," Rui continued. "That was a really solid defeat with no ifs and buts. He wasn’t even trying to hurt , and yet he made feel pretty weak."
"He’s the most powerful being in existence at the mont," she turned back to him on their bed, unsatisfied with Rui’s answer. "And you were in his domain. And you didn’t even go all-out."
"Trust , that wouldn’t have been enough either. That snake could crush no matter what I did to him."
"You haven’t sustained a real defeat since your battle with Ieyasu," she ignored his caveat. "A battle that happened literally more than eighteen years ago."
"Hold on now, there was the battle against the eldritch chira. I would have lost if not for Damian breaking through to Transcendence. Trust , Gigabrain or not, there was nothing I could do against that monster to win," Rui added with a hopeful expression.
"So it takes a literal Transcendent monster of all monsters to defeat you. In comparison, I was defeated by Anthea, then I was left helpless as I watched you be stolen by those light elves, and now I was defeated by the Dragon Emperor. You can’t understand how frustrating that is. I’m the second most powerful Martial Artist in the Panama Continent, and yet I don’t feel powerful at all!"
He could sense the real frustration in her voice.
It was indeed true that the past year had not been kind to Amare’s battle track record. She had been defeated by Anthea quite soundly, which lit a fire under her and propelled her to dedicate herself to nature manipulation in Genora.
It certainly helped in her battle with Lord Shenlong, but it wasn’t enough to give her the advantage. The simple fact of the matter was that she wasn’t strong enough to beat one of the top ten strongest entities in the world.
Hell, Rui almost died against an Anthea who wasn’t in his pri, and he knew that he would be skirting with death against the Dragon Emperor without a shadow of a doubt. The true world was a vast, vast world filled with millions and billions of pathwalkers.
The top ten strongest among them were truly special.
Even Transcendent Candidates, even pathwalkers who were stronger than Transcendent Candidates, weren’t enough to break into the top ten. Rui himself wasn’t entirely certain if he was in the top ten at the mont; it wasn’t like there was an international rank board that actively tracked and computed who the top ten were based on data.
He would need to fight a proper top ten who was within their pri and to evaluate exactly how he compared to them.
He didn’t offer any paltry complints regarding her power. She didn’t need him to tell her how incredibly strong she was; she was clearly aware of that, but was not happy with the amount of power that she had.
Still, it hurt his heart to see her in pain.
She had gone through hell, almost literally, and back to reach the power that she had with millennia of maddening ntal torture within her mind, retreating into her senses, until she finally achieved the power she had.
To not be able to take satisfaction with it, even after all the labor that she had gone through, was sothing Rui couldn’t bear to see.
There had to be sothing that he could do beyond words.
He could offer her sincere words of encouragent, so advice perhaps, maybe even cheer her up with another date, but all of that was too shallow. The Martial Path was indeed a solitary path, but love was a bond between two people.
’Love is adaptive evolution.’ His eyes lit up with an idea.
"...I can help you gain more power."
Amare’s amber eyes lit up with eagerness. "How?"
"The thing we discussed long before we departed from the Panama Continent," Rui remarked. "Mastering high principles. I think it’s about ti that you focused on the Martial Path rather than other paths."
Her eyes grew hazy with thought.
The appeal of Rui’s words was quite high.
Indeed, walking other paths was obviously much harder than walking her own path. Although technically, she was learning nature-oriented Martial Art in her own way, one that was highly identical to the Nature Path. The sa was even more true for Rui.
Still, high principles were more accessible than different paths. She had just chosen to shift her focus to other paths because they had limited ti on each continent they visited.
"You’re learning other Paths too," she remarked.
Rui shrugged. "I already mastered many high principles in the ten years that I spent in the Beast Domain after breaking through to the Sage Realm. So I don’t have any major shortcoming in any place. I am truly and entirely well-rounded in all fields except for environntal Martial Art like underwater or the rapidly developing outer space Martial Art. I intend to master them too, though. I have to, for Project Water."
She nodded slowly. "...You’re right. It’s embarrassing that a Martial Sage like myself doesn’t know how to manipulate gravity or space and ti like other Martial Sages."
"Though in your case, your supre mastery and the efficiency it gives rise to even on a quantum level is more than enough to compensate, you will still be stronger if you have high principles and your raw power," Rui smiled at her with confidence.
"Mastering high principles takes resources and ti, however," she murmured. "Is it really possible to master it while we’re traveling quite extensively each day?"
"Ordinarily, no. But luckily enough, you have , of all people," Rui grinned. "Now hear out..."
Amare drew closer to him as he explained to her the idea he had in mind, and her eyes lit up with a greater and greater excitent.
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