Rui recounted his ti at the Academy. Describing the various training regis and sessions he went through in the physical and Martial foundation stages that overall constituted the Foundational Stage. He went onto narrate his tis in the Exploration Stage and ultimately went on to talk about his Martial Apprentice breakthrough and his Martial Path.
"To think you discovered your Martial Path in a dream." Julian comnted, once the excitent died down a bit, leaving them alone. "Quite the fairy tale-like story, isn't it?"
"It was a magical mont." Rui affird.
"The discovery of a Martial Path... I'm not unfamiliar with it." Julian comnted. "In fact, so of the research projects I'm involved in are actually about the phenonon of discovering one's Martial Path."
"Oh?" Rui's interest imdiately perked. "Are you allowed to tell that?"
The Kandrian Institute of Sciences were royal institutes, aning the research and developnt that occurred was property of the Kandrian Royal Family. He didn't think that such research was available in the public domain.
"The projects I'm involved have extrely low confidentiality grades. As long I don't blatantly sell the actual data collected, I'm not violating my agreent with the Institute. It's the kind of project that is purely an intellectual pursuit with no real-world applications you see. Talking about it in a general sense isn't prolematic."
"I see..." Rui pondered about the information that Julian provided. He certainly wasn't aware that the research and developnt departnt of the Kandrian Institute of Sciences graded research and developnt projects in regards to confidentiality. "What research have you worked on, generally speaking?"
"Part of it has to do with the psychological and neurological impacts of the Martial Apprentice breakthrough on the Martial Artist." Julian replied. "This was also the area of research of my thesis paper in my final year you see."
"Interesting." Rui comnted. "So, what exactly did your research yield in so far as the changes and impacts of the discovery of the Martial Path?"
"We discovered that the discovery of one's Martial Path causes an increase in cognition, reaction speed, kinetic vision and reflexes, as well as body-eye coordination, to put it simply." Julian explained.
"Sounds about right." Rui nodded. When he broke through to Martial Apprentice having discovered his Martial Path, he experienced a great overall boost in several ntal paraters and attributes. "I did grow much stronger once I beca a Martial Apprentice."
"It's not as straightforward to that though." Julian replied. "We made so very odd discoveries about these enhancents, you see. For one, the data reveals that the degree of these enhancents is not static and unchanging, but rather variable. The superhuman boosts you gained are constantly changing."
"Huh?" Rui squinted in confusion when he heard that. The ntal boosts he gained from becoming a Martial Apprentice were constantly changing? That sounded like an absurd proposition to Rui at first inspection.
"What do you an?" He asked, waiting for further clarification.
"We discovered that the superhuman augnts provided by the Martial Path are in flux, they're variables rather than constants." Julian sipped his tea, before proceeding. "In so situations, Martial Apprentices demonstrate superhuman ntal attributes and paraters, but in others, they're perfectly normal human beings."
This made more sense to Rui, though he wasn't sure if he observed this in himself. These were complicated phenona that were picked up through proper empirical research, it was impossible for him to discover these things by himself through introspection.
"Let us take three scenarios, and this is actually a simplified version of so of the experints and surveys we conducted." Julian continued. "Let us take scenario A, where a Martial Apprentice is engaged in combat. Scenario B, where a Martial Apprentice is engaging in ti-pressure manual labor tasks. Scenario C where a Martial Apprentice is participating in a ti-pressure math exam. Do you think the superhuman reaction and processing ti of the Martial Apprentice will be the sa in all three scenarios and activities?"
"Hmmm..." Rui pondered. "Shouldn't it?"
It seed intuitively obvious to him that this should be the case. Why would these ntal and neurological paraters change? But given what Julian said earlier, he was probably wrong.
"It does change, that is what our research revealed." Julian answered, eting Rui's expectations.
"Interesting." Rui comnted.
"The ntal processing speed of the Martial Apprentice is Scenario A; combat, was quite superhuman.
The ntal processing speed in Scenario B; ti-pressure manual labour tasks, was also superhuman but less than scenario A, much lesser, in fact." Julian continued. "As for Scenario C... The ti-pressure math exam... We found sothing quite surprising."
"Oh?"
"The ntal processing ti of a Martial Apprentice in scenario C was not superhuman at all. It was perfectly normal and average. As though these were normal humans and not Martial Apprentices."
Rui understood the implications of the data imdiately, having been an empirical researcher himself. "So basically, the activity that a Martial Apprentice is engaging is the influencing factor of how well a Martial Apprentice performs. Furthermore, it seems that the closer to actual combat that activity is, the more superhuman a Martial Apprentice is. So the ntal performance paraters increase the closer to combat the activity is, forming a sort of spectrum, am I right?"
Julian smiled. "You understood imdiately, as expected of my little brother."
Rui grew absorbed as he pondered about the implications of the data. It was truly fascinating. Martial Apprentices perford best, as far as ntal performance paraters went, when they engaged in combat, sub-optimally when they engaged in physical tasks, and least optimally when they perford tasks that had nothing to do with combat.
"Scenario B was a ti-pressure physical scenario. Although it was not combat, it was not too far from combat and probably shared so similarities. Which is why the Martial Apprentice showed sub-optimal results, but not zero results." Rui murmured. "But a math test is too far from combat, hence the Martial Apprentice perford least optimally. This shows a causation between the closeness of the activity to combat, and a Martial Apprentice's performance paraters, assuming all other feasible variables were controlled for."
"They were." Julian assured. "I'm impressed by your insights into this, even though you have no experience with empirical research, quite remarkable." He threw Rui an odd look.
Rui was too absorbed by the prior revelations to try and justify this. The information Julian revealed implied that the neurological phenonon caused by the discovery of the Martial Path were dormant when Martial Apprentices did things that were further away from combat.
As for exactly why and how, Rui was able to co up with a few bare-bones hypotheses and theories based on his scientific background!
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