The Martial Unity

Chapter 3250: Stunning Shortcomings

It had been clear to him that their over-reliance on nature manipulation has caused them to neglect what should have been the basics. Regardless of what species one was of and what Path one followed, the fact of the matter was that one ought to have mastered the basics when it came to combat movements.

A punch was a punch, no matter the species, and he found that the dark elves had neglected non-Nature aspects of combat extremely egregiously. Then again, perhaps that was to be expected from a civilization and a species that hated war and was aggressively pacifist.

’…I don’t deny your criticism,’ the Mother of Nature admitted. ’Indeed, especially compared to you human beings and your Martial Artists, we are indeed very lacking in this area. It is not as large a problem as our absence of experience and lack of battle-testing, however.’

Rui shook his head. “It is a direct consequence of a lack of battle-testing. If you had been engaged in war continuously, you would have known that this level of absence of skill is simply not permissible. You can’t have warriors that are so absurdly clumsy. It is to the extent that not even your home court advantage is enough to possibly compensate for this shortcoming. Clumsy, inexperienced warriors will not even be able to make the most of such a powerful advantage, and your warriors will die by the droves. It is better that you resolve this with some proper training before it gets out of hand.”

’It would behoove you to know that we have our own form of martial arts as well,’ the Mother of Nature chided him. ’However, it is not as sophisticated and is quite limited.’

“Well, toss it aside because it clearly is not doing you any good,” Rui replied, shaking his head. “I can create an accessible and systemized set of movements that can help different kinds of elven warriors broadly and create training regimes that can help them iron out those movements effectively. There is actually a lot of potential here, more than you might think, because unlike Martial Artists, your elven warriors are physically weak, so you won’t need extravagant facilities, your average forest and nature manipulation would be enough to help each of you, dark elves, to master your movements and shore up this weakness.”

In fact, the more Rui thought about it, the more spectacular the idea was. While Martial Sages like himself often needed the equivalent of nuclear shelters with double-reinforcement to train without causing widespread destruction, the dark elves had no such problems because they were physically much weaker.

“For one, it should be possible to get all dark elves to be as skilled as the Genoran Guardian,” Rui began. “And second, it should be possible to get the Genoran Guardian to be even more efficient and effective and beat her fundamentals into shape.”

’That’s impossible,’ the Mother of Nature replied with a hint of skepticism. Even what you criticize is the result of a lot of hard work. We dark elves simply don’t have the affinity for martial arts that you humans do.’

“I understand that,” Rui replied. “That is why I’m not holding you to the standards of our Martial Artists, I’m holding you to the standards of our youngest students who are teenagers. I refuse to believe that you guys can’t at least be that skilled. I have fought the evolutionaries, and others have fought other species; we have yet to fight a clumsy evolutionary or a clumsy tekvore. Even the goddamn giants are more skilled than you guys!”

His words were harsh, but true. Even the giants, in all their primitivity, had some conceptualization of systemizing their combat. The dark elves, on the other hand, were simply unacceptable with how primitive their Martial combat was.

It was not a consequence of not having an affinity for martial arts. If that was the case, then one could expect that even the dwarves, who were weaker and smaller than the dark elves, would be even more clumsy, but they hadn’t been.

“This is simply a product of your pacifism,” Rui remarked. “I’m not going to criticize it as a whole, no, but I will criticize the negative effects it has and how you have dealt with it. I can offer to refine a Martial Art for you, dark elves, designed to resonate with your strengths that you can master more easily. I will also help create training regimes to increase the success and mastery rate of those who attempt to master it.”

The Mother of Nature paused as she fell into thought.

His words had been harsh, but she appreciated his candor. In particular, she couldn’t help but find his offer particularly optimistic for the development of the military power of the dark elves.

She was in charge of training dark elves, among all the Mothers of Nature in Genora, having been a dedicated warrior dark elf before she achieved Singularity of Nature and became an exalted Mother of Nature. The growing problems and lack of experience of the dark elven military arrangements were ones that she was responsible for, out of her colleagues who disdained war and fighting, and anything to do with it.

It put a lot of pressure on her.

Thus, Rui’s solutions were truly like music to her ears.

’…And in return, you want me to teach you the Nature Path, even if it is impossible for you to learn?’

“Yes, although I am indeed taking away from human civilization’s bargaining chips, so it is only fair that I demand something in return that also benefits human civilization as a whole,” Rui replied. “Something minor. Like how to integrate nature and industrialization together without having them clash with each other or have the latter at the cost of the former. I believe this is something that you want human civilization to adopt because it is beneficial to you, dark elves, is it not?”

’That is indeed something we desire to see in human civilization,’ she admitted. ’This is something that I’m amenable to as an agreement.’